Let’s be straightforward and call a product a product: Andy Gibb. Yon shadow – dancer is like a political candidate who is the sum of a team effort – in this case ultra – brother Barry Gibb who directs the Bee Gee sound, Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson who do the producing for the Anglo-Aussie dynasty, and RSO Records which is probably the only economic enterprise in the western hemisphere that could fight the Arabs to a draw. This is not to say Andy is a chump or a mere pawn. In fact, it takes pretty good sense to realize when the best ideas in the room aren’t yours.
Hit Parader December, 1978:
Andy Gibb: Nice Guys Finish FirstAndy’s main talent is his ability to smile. A handsome guy, no question, and what a set of choppers. This doesn’t make him an “artist”, but then not all politicians are statesmen. The main idea is to get the votes, and Andy’s piling them up so fast he’s got the #2 album in the country (Shadow Dancing) as I pound these keys, probably not half so fast as the cash register kids are pounding theirs at your local music mart. Now, let’s explore a few truths:
*“Handsome is as handsome does.” I never did particularly understand this one, but if I read it right the message is that no matter how good – lookin’ you are, your actions count more than your smile. Gibb seems to test this old homily to its limits, because in this case, though I want to make it perfectly clear Andy is a NICE guy, what Handsome does just CAN’T be the #2 most significant job of music making in America. Suppose we revise the old cliché to: “Handsome does handsomely, as is.”*”Clothes make the man.” Now here we’re onto something. You
don’t see much of the Gibb soul on this album, but you DO see a couple of nice shirts. And how about those snakeskin boots! I’ll tell you what these clothes make Andy Gibb: A pop star. Andy’s pants fit as well as Shaun Cassidy’s, plus he has more hair on his chest. You can search all you want for the distinctive thumb-print of a remarkable artist on this LP, but you won’t find it. I don’t say Andy’s a whiffle ball as a human being, but this is a skin-deep album. He is distinctive to the extent that he’s become a rich pop star – but there were lots of them already.
*”Nice guys finish last.” Wrong! When I met Andy to do the interview that follows, what I found was the typical suburban kid – next – door, despite his globe-trotting youth and famous brothers. I believe he was even wearing high-cut white sneakers. Andy has a harmless singing voice, which he doesn’t push at you too hard, which again demonstrates the common sense of a fellow who knows his limitations.
There is a class of person brought up in western culture – probably by parents who admired Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper – who were taught that “niceness” is next to godliness, a sort of Pristeen deodorant of the temperament, and Andy’s public image (I’m not talking about the human being remember) seems built on that foundation. Getting along with perfect strangers as though they were your neighbors (it’s a snap once you get the small – talk perfected) is obviously an asset if you’re aiming for #2 albums and #1 singles. And Andy’s lyrics are pretty small talk. One more proof of what a nice guy Andy is: I caught him on the ‘Grease’ television special, and he can’t dance worth a damn.
Okay, so much for the opening shots – NOT cheap shots, mind you, for I attempt not to psychoanalyze the man, but merely to dissect the image which he is voluntarily marketing to the public for his own professional gain (I mean “money.”) When he did his first round of interviews in America last year, I’d already talked to Andy’s brothers about him.
“We asked him if he’s like to join us,” Barry had said, “and he said, ‘No, man, I’d rather go solo.’ He was too young to be with us at first (seven years younger than the twins, Robin and Maurice), and he’s grown up having the Bee Gees pushed down his throat.” I figured the Bee Gee connection was the obvious angle on the unknown little brother.
HP: WERE YOU EVER A MEMBER OF THE BROTHERS GIBB AT ANY TIME?
AG: No, but we’ver had many, many very close days when I’ve been about to join them. Originally, we emigrated to Australia, from 1958-1967, and the Bee Gees became the biggest group in Australia. But in Australia, once you hit the top you can’t go any further, world-wide anyway. You have to get out. So the whole family came back to England and they became world-famous then. My father sold out everything he had and we went into semi-retirement to live in Spain, while the boys stayed on and did what they had to do.
HP: WHERE DID YOU LIVE?
AG: On a little island off the coast called Ibiza, a tourist resort but very nice… I forget what you asked me.
HP: WHY YOU DIDN’T HOOK UP WITH YOUR BROTHERS.
AG: Right. Well Spain was where I got my career together I suppose – not professionally, but at least I got my experience there in a lot of nightclubs and things like that.
HP: YOU MUST HAVE BEEN BARELY A TEENAGER THEN. (HE’S NOW 20).
AG: I was very young, but I was in nightclubs from 2 til 5 in the morning. I couldn’t get paid, but got free beers and free food and that. But I never messed about with kids my own age, I’ve always been with adults, probably from what my family was doing, you know? Anyway, they asked me to join the group, I think it was twice in Spain. It was the biggest thing I wanted to do, but I wanted to get about five years under my belt, just for my own experience, before I went into something. Because if you join them, it’s not a matter of working for something – you’re instantly on that level. I didn’t want to do that. That’s why I went back to Australia for two years recently, to try to do it there, before I came back to America.
HP: TO TRY OUT WITHOUT GETTING SEEN WORLD-WIDE?
AG: Sure. If you can make it with an Australian audience you can make it anywhere in the world, because they’re very hard to knock down, they’re very critical. Basically, it’s good for you. They’d had nine years in Australia: I only had two before Robert Stigwood (head of RSO Records) signed me up. But you don’t say ‘Nah, I think I need a few more years, man’, because offers like that don’t come along every day, eh? I never even thought I was ready, but we came out and proved that we are I suppose. We’re gonna face up to the world.
HP: HOW DID THIS DEAL COME ABOUT WITH STIGWOOD?
AG: I was just doing my work in Australia. I wasn’t big, but I wasn’t tiny, you know? I was a support for the Bay City Rollers throughout the country and Sweet. And I had one single out there – that was all. And one day I was just going about my business when I got a phone call from Barry. He was in Alaska of all places, and he said, ‘I’m in the hotel getting ready to have a concert and I spoke to Robert and he’s very interested in signing you.’ He said, ‘I told Robert I think now is the right time to make a move.’ So it was Barry who made the first move, because he wanted to get some production things going. Robert and I traded some phone calls and got together in Bermuda and discussed the whole contract.
HP: HAD YOU MET STIGWOOD BEFORE?
AG: I’d met him as a kid. I’d been in a short film and "Cucumber Castle’ briefly. (Cucumber Castle is the Bee Gees’ forgotten, disastrous first attempt at film-making).
HP: DO YOU WORRY ABOUT DISTINGUISHING YOURSELF FROM YOUR BROTHERS?
AG: Yea, but it’s gonna happen to me all through my life. It’s very hard. I’d like to get two identities but it isn’t easy. I’m using a very similar sound – fortunately or unfortunately. I find it hard to write with the disco flavoring they do, but the writing that comes out of me naturally is “Beagle” – a cross between the Bee Gees and the Eagles.
You see? Andy’s a likeable enough fellow with a certain amount of grip on his situation, who has become the “entertainer” he set out to be. His album is a collection of limp, pretty ballads with nearly aimless melodies that make me yearn for the snap of the Bee Gees’ hits or the compositional spine of a Boz Scaggs tune. I’ll admit that “Shadow Dancing” was one of the more listenable radio singles this summer (the other three brothers co-wrote it with Andy), and a track called “Melody” seemed pretty sweet, but I have a feeling I’m reaching. Frankly, much of this mush reminds me of mid-period, pre-R&B Bee Gees sentiment.
The words? Well, if you’re old enough to read, none of this explores an emotion or a circumstance you haven’t known before. Some of the lyrics seem so vague, in fact, that the sentiments could apply equally to a dead pet or a runaway grandmother.
Andy’s voice is innocuous and thin, politely staying out of the way of Albhy and Karl’s production – strings, backup vocals, etc. Listen, with this kind of support my mother could have a hit reading her banana bread recipe.
It’s cocktail disco, something to put on when you’re winding down with a joint at the end of a day at the office and don’t want to have to pay attention to anything. A sample of the things I daydreamed while listening to this album:
*KATHERINE HEPBURN, who used to visit her brother three houses down from us in Connecticut when I was a kid.
*KAREN, a girl from Vancouver who also wears white sneakers.
*OZZIE & HARRIET, for whom Andy would make a neat third son, the Ricky Nelson of the seventies.
*PINA COLALDAS, a sort of adult milkshake.
*ROBERT STIGWOOD’S MONEY.
*WHAT A GOOD JOB I’D DO IF I WERE A PHILANTHROPIST.
So you see it’s been a pleasant, vanilla afternoon altogether, and Andy Gibb’s harmless record didn’t interfere with it at all. And that – not interfering with anyone’s thought patterns – is what being “nice” is all about.
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